[12]competition
★ 2 hours · 1st placeDOMINATION: The Frontend Challenge
🏆 WinnerTwo hours, one theme, a full frontend. Ours was "Open-World Game Companion", and we built AETHERIA: a cinematic portal that opens on a floating 3D island and descends, in one scroll, into four worlds of maps, relics, legends and trades. We thought first, planned, designed, then built. And we took first place. 🥇
- When
- July 2026
- Where
- Chitkara University, Punjab
- Hosted by
- Code 2 Chill Club · Chitkara University
- Format
- in person · 2 hours
- Track
- Open-World Game Companion (GAM-03)
[01]The squad
AA-OG's
- Govind Jindal← that's me
- Aaradhya Khanna
My role · Creative frontend & 3D
[02]The road to the finale
Round 1
The brief
Each team got a problem statement to turn into a complete frontend experience. Ours, GAM-03: an open-world game companion.
Theme locked 🎮
Round 2
The two hours
Think, plan and design first. Then a 3D island, a scroll-driven descent and four standalone modules, from the first commit at 12:54 to the last at 14:47.
🥇 First position
[03]What we built
AETHERIA
Running live, right here. Click around.
A cinematic 3D entrance
You land on a floating island with an ocean, mist and weather, built with Three.js and React Three Fiber, with ambient sound to match.
One continuous shot
Scrolling flies the camera from the island down through the village and into an ancient study, with no page cuts at all.
The Cartographer's Sanctum
Interactive maps across different games, with pins for secret locations and hidden easter eggs.
The Grand Guild Exchange
A marketplace where players share reusable community artefacts, styled as an in-world trading hall.
Legends and the Vault
Track characters, achievements and collectibles by rarity, from common to mythic, in the Hall of Legends and the Curator's Vault.
[04]Side quests
Think. Plan. Design. Then code.
With only two hours, the obvious move is to start typing. We didn't. We thought it through, planned it and designed it first, and only then wrote the first line.
Plan > panicFour worlds in 22 minutes
The Guild Exchange landed at 14:17, the Sanctum and Achievements at 14:34, and the Curator's Vault at 14:39. Four modules in 22 minutes. 🏃♂️💨
Speedrun ✓Loot drop
First place came with a pair of headphones each and a Chitkara gift box. Fitting prizes for a gaming theme. 🎮
Loot ✓Team AA-OG's
Two people, two hours, one island. Aaradhya and I, back on the same team again. 🫡
Duo
[05]Plot twist
The six-minute rewrite. ⏱️
Then 😱
At 14:41, six minutes before our last commit, we ripped TypeScript and ES modules out of the modules, so React could render straight in the browser through global variables. No build step, no bundler.
Now 🧠
That last-minute call became the architecture. Each module is a standalone static app, served next to a Next.js 3D landing page. The README now calls it a "micro-frontend architecture". 😎
[06]The two hours, in commits ⏳
$ git log --since="Jul 18" --until="Jul 19" --reverse --oneline
- 5ce088012:54Initial Commit
- 1eab2ba13:17Implemented scroll-driven continuous transition from exterior village scene to interior ancient study
- f7e80f913:32Implemented scroll-driven navigation with interactive scene overlays and progress tracking
- 2b39cca13:57Add interactive explorer table artifacts and navigation phase to ancient study scene
- bfc265714:03Replace custom scroll event listener with native scroll-driven progress container
- 997e8fe14:17Added Grand Guild Exchange marketplace frontend with custom diegetic CSS theme
- 29c1f9714:22Update journey link destination and fix next.js type reference path
- 8c96dc714:34feat: implement cartographer's sanctum and achievements modules with data providers and site structures
- 217e69814:39feat: implement Curator's Vault page and update navigation link
- cae986914:41refactor: remove TypeScript and ES modules to support direct browser-based React rendering via global variables
- f284dc914:47refactor: remove module imports and migrate to global window scope for component registration
$
- Commits
- 11
- Span
- 113 min
- Avg. message
- 80.5 chars
- Shortest
- “Initial Commit”
The first commit landed at 12:54 and the last at 14:47: 11 commits in 1 hour 53 minutes, all on 18 July. A 3D island, a scroll-driven descent, four modules and one emergency rewrite. Then the results came out. 🥇
[07]From the floor
[08]The certificate
Delivered ✓Certificate found. 📬
DOMINATION: The Frontend Challenge, Code 2 Chill Club, 18 July 2026. 📜 The paper says "participation". The headphones say otherwise. 🎧🥇
“DOMINATION proved something two hours can teach better than two weeks: thinking before building isn't slow, it's the fastest way to the finish. And the rule-breaking hack in the last six minutes turned out to be good architecture.”
Next hackathon
Byte the Vibe